9 March, at 15:00 in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine the first organizational meeting of the interdepartmental working group to develop amendments to the legislation in the sphere of freedom of expression was held with participation of: Yurii Stets – the Minister of information policy of Ukraine, Bohdan Onufryk – MP of Ukraine, Yurii Artemenko – chairman of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine, Oleh Nalyvaiko – chairman of the State Committee for television and radio broadcasting of Ukraine, Iryna Yushchenko – head of sector legal work and law-drafting activities of the Ministry of information policy of Ukraine.
At the meeting the work plan of the group was discussed and the following decisions were made:
- Oleh Nalyvaiko – chairman of the State Committee for television and radio broadcasting of Ukraine was told to hold a meeting with the National Union of journalists of Ukraine to discuss their comments, proposals on introducing amendments into the current regulatory legal acts in the field of freedom of expression;
- Yurii Artemenko – chairman of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine was told to hold a series of working meetings and roundtables with heads of broadcasting companies;
- Tetiana Popova – Deputy Minister of information policy of Ukraine was told to conduct negotiations with the international partners (the OSCE, the Council of Europe, international human rights organizations, etc.);
- Bohdan Onufryk – MP of Ukraine was told to report at the meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on freedom of speech on specific areas of cooperation between the Committee and the interdepartmental working group to develop amendments to the legislation in the sphere of freedom of speech.
We will remind, in pursuance of the Action Plan of the Ministry of information policy of Ukraine for 2016, on 29 February, the Interdepartmental working group to develop amendments to the legislation in the sphere of freedom of speech was established, whose main task is the harmonization of Ukrainian legislation in the field of media and freedom of expression in line with European standards.